From: Brad Ediger <brad@...>
Date: 2008-04-02T07:00:48+09:00
Subject: [ANN] New Ruby Implementation - RBXML

Ruby is a wonderful language, but its syntax has some shortcomings.  
Inspired by Perl, the syntax of Ruby requires many special cases and  
is difficult to parse by anything but a full Ruby interpreter. We seek  
to fix this issue with a new, unambiguous syntax for Ruby: RBXML.

"Business Reporting and XML go hand in hand. I plan to convert Ruport  
to RBXML as soon as I can!"
    -- Gregory Brown, Ruby Reports maintainer

<http://www.bradediger.com/blog/2008/04/a_modest_syntax_proposal_rbxml.html 
 >
<http://tinyurl.com/23elz5>

===========

Consider the following Ruby code. While it is certainly concise, it  
achieves this goal through use of obscure symbols such as . and |.  
This makes it difficult to read, and more importantly, difficult to  
parse by machine.

class Integer
   def factorial
     (1..self).inject(1) {|p, x| p*x}
   end
end

Rubyists talk a lot about metaprogramming, but how are you supposed to  
introspect on a language like that? Some projects try to work around  
these limitations by letting Ruby code introspect on itself; however,  
the result can be unwieldy. Why reinvent the wheel when XML has been  
around for years? Consider the much more regular and understandable  
syntax in RBXML:

<class name="Integer">
  <def name="factorial">
    <method-call>
      <name>inject</name>
      <receiver>
        <range exclude-end="false">
          <start>
            <integer>1</integer>
          </start>
          <end>self</end>
        </range>
      </receiver>
      <argument>
        <integer>1</integer>
      </argument>
      <block>
        <parameter name="p" />
        <parameter name="x" />
        <code>
          <method-call>
            <name>*</name>
            <receiver>p</receiver>
            <argument>x</argument>
          </method-call>
        </code>
      </block>
    </method-call>
  </def>
</class>

Just as languages in the Lisp family represent their parse trees with  
s-expressions, this regular syntax represents the parse tree directly,  
with only a small bit of XML parsing. Rubyists now have the advantage  
of not having an extra layer of syntax between them and their concepts.

===========

To read more, visit:

<http://www.bradediger.com/blog/2008/04/a_modest_syntax_proposal_rbxml.html 
 >
<http://tinyurl.com/23elz5>

===========

Brad Ediger
brad@bradediger.com